25 Facts You Didn’t Know About The Movie ‘Grease’

Grease is the best. It’s a classic in the world of movie musicals. Everyone has seen it, or at least a scene or two, at some point in their life. But there’s a lot more to this 1978 film based on a musical set in the 1950’s than you thought. We all know that Jeff Conaway (RIP) played Danny Zuko on Broadway and John Tavolta was Doody, but did you know Elvis was offered a role?

In the stage play, the song had a reference to Sal Mineo, who was murdered in 1976. For the movie, they changed the lyric to “Elvis, Elvis, let me be! Keep that pelvis far from me!” In reference to Elvis Presley,who died the same day the scene was filmed. The day was August 16, 1977.

John Travolta was 23, Jeff Conaway was 26, and Stockard Channing was 33 (older than Dennis C. Stewart A.K.A. Crater face or Leo, Leader of the Scorpions, who was 30). The two closest to high school age were Lorenzo Lamas (Tom) and Dinah Manoff (Marty), they were both 19.

Lucie Arnaz was dropped from consideration after Lucille Ball called and said “I used to own that studio; my daughter’s not doing a screen test!” But actually, she owned the studio Desilu which was bought by Paramount.

…the scene explaining it got cut. They filmed a scene, where the couple got into a heated argument, before the diner scene but it was pulled due to it’s grittiness. It was compared to something Martin Scorsese might have directed.

13. The first time John Travolta met Olivia Newton-John was at her house.

And the injury led to his abuse of prescription medication and downward path. He was dropped by fellow cast members during filming. This information was not publicly known until Conaway’s appearance on Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew.

15. Olivia Newton-John’s pants were so tight when filming “You’re The One That I Want,” that the zipper was broken.

They were on location in a real school at the time in downtown L.A. Originally Sandy was not intended to dance in this scene, it was meant to be just Danny and Cha Cha. It was reputedly 116 degrees during filming. Several extras suffered heat-related illness.

22. But it took only one day to film “You’re The One That I Want”/the end scene.

It was filmed with a traveling carnival that was there only for the day. The next day, director Randal Kleiser wanted to film some extra close-ups, but the carnival had left, so they had to recreate pieces of that set to accomplish it.

Paramount later nixed the idea and we sadly got Grease 2 in 1982. This orignal sequel plan grew out of Coach Calhoun’s line “See you in summer school” to a student before he is hit with a pie in the carnival scene near the end.